In the eye of the beholder
Provenance does mean something to me. I was fortunate enough to attend a session of the Barry Halper auction (knowing full well I couldn't afford anything in the auction), just to get the catalog and the bidding paddle.
A certain dealer bought several of the rarer vintage card lots from the Halper auction. The next month in his catalog, I saw a 1911 Baseball Bats card from the Halper auction that fit my collection and I jumped at the chance to acquire something from the sale. An average baseball fan or collector may not know the names of Nagy or Carter, but you bring up the name of Barry Halper and a lot more people will recall the name and/or the collection.
10 years later, many auction houses still reference if a piece of memorabilia originated from the Halper collection, but I don't know how many of the cards from his collection can be traced back?
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